Most days at Tasman Eco Village were quite quiet and laidback. With 6 hours of work a day, and short daylight hours, the days went by quickly. That said, there was still some free time for me to explore the surrounding areas, and there was quite a bit of nice scenery to be seen, even on foot.
Despite my best efforts, the Great Ocean Road posting will have to wait for at least a week (there are a lot of photos to process). I’m heading out to the Outback for a week long journey that will end up with me sitting in front of an iconic, giant red rock. I can’t wait! 😀
(After all that excitement, I’ll probably look as tired as this guy, spotted on the GOR)
On the drive from Mt. Cook to Queenstown, I had a few stops I wanted to make. First, I stopped and hiked down to the shores of Lake Pukaki.
Just a lovely sendoff from the Mt. Cook Area.
The previous theme didn’t quite handle things as well as I’d like (photos being clipped off at times being the major one). So, I’ve updated the website and hopefully it will be a bit cleaner and easier to view now.
A ‘Great Walk’ evokes quite a few images to me. Beautiful/stunning landscapes. Unique structures and things that will remain in your memories for years to come. Good huts/campsites. My first Great Walk was a bit underwhelming in those aspects. The Tongariro Northern Circuit on the other hand was THE definition of a Great Walk.
For this hike I wasn’t going by myself, I’d met up with another traveller, Sara, from Italy. We would be tackling the circuit in 3 days, 2 nights, as well as doing some of the optional paths along the way. An ambitious plan but both of us were used to hiking, Sara moreso than I. We’d start at Whakapapa and headed to Mangatepopo Hut (at just under 1200m elevation) for the first night, complete the Tongariro Crossing part of the circuit on the second day and push onwards to the Waihohonu Hut, and return to Whakapapa on the 3rd day. All told it would be about 45km of hiking without any detours, including a challenging 2nd day of over 20km and at minimum a 650m climb then descent. It didn’t work out quite that way – the 2nd day ended up being over 25km and 1100m climbing/descending.
Just a note – to keep the posts from getting *too* long on the main page (increasing bandwidth/downloading/etc unnecessarily), I’m going to start using summaries for long posts (such as the skydiving one) – to see the full post, simply click on ‘Continue Reading…’, the Post Title, or the ->More button at the bottom right of the post. Lots of options.
Happy reading. 🙂
Alright, I think I have this web page set up properly now, and with a few pieces of content to boot! Time to send the emails and go live! And then never update the site again. 😛
Nah, hopefully I’ll be pretty good about updating regularly, though the limited internet available my hinder that for now. I have found one free source though – the public libraries here in Auckland have wifi, though it’s pretty slow. Likely because the place is packed with people who, like me, just want simple internet access (for free). Now to start downloading movies…(not going to happen – they limit each computer to 100MB/day).
If you’ve got any comments or suggestions about the site or the content, drop me a line!